Tips for Holiday Travel
Traveling during holidays can be made easier if you plan your trip carefully. Here are some tips for stress-free holiday travel.
Try avoiding the main travel dates and peak travel times. For example, traveling the day before Thanksgiving, or on the last couple of days before Christmas, can be a very stressful and expensive experience. Everyone is traveling at the same time, so there will be congestion on the roads if you are driving, and most flights are fully booked weeks or even months in advance. If you can travel a few days earlier, you can often save money and find traveling easier and less crowded. Some people prefer driving or flying on Thanksgiving Day, because airfares are much cheaper than on the day before Thanksgiving and if you drive, roads can be much more peaceful.
If you are traveling on a budget and are looking for cheap airfares, the best way to find them is to travel outside the peak travel times and to book ahead. The days before and after the main holidays, such as Christmas, New Year’s Eve, Thanksgiving and Easter, are the busiest days when everyone wants to travel, and prices for flights are high. If you can be flexible with your traveling schedule, try flying earlier or later than everyone else does. This works whenever you need to find low fares for flights. Weekends are always the most expensive times to fly, and if you can travel in the middle of the week, you can often be surprised at how much lower the prices are.
For travel during the busiest holidays, always book flights, train tickets and accommodation as far in advance as possible. Flights as well as hotel rooms get fully booked often weeks or months ahead of a major holiday, and the closer you get to the travel date the higher the costs of traveling will be. If you need to travel during the peak travel days, make sure to make all arrangements months ahead of the time to guarantee a ticket on that flight or the hotel room you need. Try booking online: many travel companies, hotels and airlines offer discounts for Internet bookings.
On the day of travel, leave early: during the main holiday season, there are often flight delays at airports and bad traffic jams on roads simply because everyone is traveling at the same time. Leave some extra time for traveling, and you will find it much easier and less stressful.
